Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Vere of Norbiton on 21 April (HL14705), what assessment they have made of the impact that additional stops at Swinderby train station will have on journey times between Lincoln and (1) Leicester, (2) Derby, and (3) Birmingham; and whether they consider reducing those train journey times to make them competitive with the equivalent journeys by car to be a strategic priority.

The maximum impact of additional services calls at Swinderby is 2 minutes onto the journey times; Midlands Connect are currently developing a proposal for line speed improvements between Lincoln and Nottingham, as part of their role in promoting strategic transport investment across the Midlands region. This aims to reduce journey times for passenger services by up to two minutes between Lincoln and Newark, although even with these journey time savings and the removal of Swinderby calls, the relative competitiveness of journeys by train versus car would remain broadly unchanged.